Fourth Tier Law Schools

Lawyerly Love Note of the Day: A Sad Sign of the Times

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You are so perfect, you make going to law school a good decision!

– A romantic line taken from a love note sent from one law student to another at a lower-tier law school.

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Morning Docket: 02.02.12

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* How many friend requests did these firms just get? Fenwick & West and Simpson Thacher are the Biglaw stars of Facebook’s S-1 filing for its $5B initial public offering. Like. [Am Law Daily]

* The prosecution is expected to make its arguments today in Julian Assange’s appeal of his extradition from the U.K. to Sweden. Hope it won’t affect his role on The Simpsons. [CNN]

* Adventures in fourth-tier second-tier law school marketing: go to the University of Dayton School of Law, take a tour, and get your first-year textbooks for free. Mmm, the sweet smell of bribery. [National Law Journal]

* The little hybrid that could: Heather Peters, the former lawyer who decided to sue Honda in small claims court, has won her case. Maybe she should reconsider her career options? [Los Angeles Times]

* Looking for a way to shield your assets during a wrongful death suit? Just adopt your adult girlfriend. It has “nothing to do with the lawsuit” — dude just wants to bang his daughter. No big deal. [Palm Beach Post]

* Unpaid internships are so last season. A former intern for fashion mag Harper’s Bazaar wants class action certification for a lawsuit claiming that her free labor violated wage and hour laws. [New York Times]

Morning Docket: 12.09.11

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* DLA Piper is blaming the Occupy Wall Street movement for Biglaw’s sad, 2011 bonus season. It looks like we can expect a Cravath match from that firm. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* We could really use some more law schools — fourth tier law schools, in particular. Say hello to the Savannah Law School, a John Marshall Law School Atlanta production. [National Law Journal]

* University of Texas School of Law Dean Larry Sager has been ousted from his position. Readers have flooded our inbox with the news, so we’ll have more on this later. [Texas Tribune]

* This Senate victory for gay servicemembers came with unintended consequences. It’s now kosher to have sex with men, women, and everything else under military law. [Washington Post]

* Prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty against Stephen McDaniel. If being drawn and quartered were an option, maybe this medieval scholar wouldn’t mind so much. [Macon Telegraph]

* Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Although Ben Stein is the keynote speaker at this year’s ABA Techshow, legal tech nerds will likely be unable to win his money. [ABA Journal]

In Defense of Law School — Namely, Touro and Other Fourth-Tier Schools

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Last week, I wrote a post about Touro Law School. The post highlighted allegations of wrongdoing at Touro College. In light of these allegations, and after talking about Touro Law’s reputation with a St. John’s law student I know, I suggested that the ABA might want to take a closer look a Touro Law — a fourth-tier law school that charges students $40,000 a year. Read the original post here.

Students at Touro and other fourth-tier law schools quickly came out of the woodwork. I see myself as a clear voice against the exploitation of these people by institutions charging them way too much. But they see me as an elitist who places institutional prestige ahead of quality education.

In my youth, I knew a lot of Touro Law graduates — I grew up on Long Island, and there are a lot of them out there. But it occurs to me that as an adult (and especially since I started working for Above the Law almost two and half years ago), I’ve had very little opportunity to interact with Touro students or grads, or people from other fourth-tier institutions. Our top-tier readers are often the most vocal, and ATL has put me in contact with scores of law students and alumni from second- and third-tier schools. The fourth tier, not so much.

With that in mind, one Touro Law student took the time to write an epic defense of Touro and fourth-tier legal education more generally. I don’t agree with a lot of it, but here at ATL, we do like to hear and present different sides of important arguments.

Everybody has heard my position on this matter (“the tuition is too damn high”), so let’s take a look at the other side — straight from the mouth of a student actually enrolled at Touro…

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